LUL Trains: "Phase 2 pilot" will mean cuts and displacements

LUL is planning to launch a pilot of "Phase 2" of its proposed "four-day week" scheme on the Bakerloo line.

In Phase 2, we'll continue to work a five-day pattern. Parameters (e.g., maximum driving time) will widen, but the paid meal break will be brought inside the working day, so the average duty length will decrease. The duties will probably look quite attractive. But the company has refused to agree that anyone who volunteers for Phase 2 can withdraw once they've seen duties for Phase 3, the final phase of the scheme. So they're asking us to sign up for something without knowing what we'll actually be working.

They've also announced that the pilot will involve seven roster positions at each Bakerloo line depot being deleted. Let's call this what it is: job cuts. In practise, it means the seven most junior drivers at each depot will be displaced back into the pool, a group of reserve staff who have very little stability and certainty over their shifts and rest days. As and when they move out of the pool, their positions will not necessarily be backfilled. This means that, whilst deleting roster positions doesn't cause any currently-employed worker to lose their job, it means worsening conditions for those displaced and a reduction in headcount overall. In effect, it's depriving future drivers of jobs.

The company's scheme also entails a significant increase in the power the employer has to change pool drivers' shift times and locations. As it stands, someone who's waited in the pool a long time, and has finally been moved onto the permanent roster, now faces displacement back into the pool, on worse conditions than previously.

There's another question mark over the company's announcement, which is that it says its draft rosters and duties assume a 100% participation rate. But the company has also said that the scheme will be "voluntary", and the company must know, given that many Bakerloo drivers have struck against the plans, not everyone is going to volunteer. So how do they square this? Are they simply being naive, or is the company's notional commitment to "voluntary" implementation starting to unravel already?

It's a scandal that the so-called "Train Drivers' Union", Aslef, has not only failed to resist this scheme but is actively colluding in its implementation. Drivers in Aslef who face displacement, and whose union is helping their employer make their working lives worse, should ask serious questions of their leadership. When RMT renews strikes against the company's plans, as Tubeworker hopes it will, drivers, in either union, who want to defend conditions should join the picket line.